CHICAGO _ The former Northwestern University professor and Oxford University employee accused of fatally stabbing a 26-year-old man in a Chicago high-rise last month had communicated for months about their "sexual fantasies" of killing someone and then each other, prosecutors said Sunday.
Wyndham Lathem, 43, and Andrew Warren, 56, were held without bond after prosecutors detailed the allegations against them during their first Cook County court appearance since allegedly fleeing Chicago.
Lathem, the former professor, and Warren, a financial officer at Somerville College, part of the Oxford system in Great Britain, had connected on an Internet chat room about their fantasies, prosecutors said.
Lathem paid for Warren to travel to Chicago so they could carry out their fantasies, said Assistant State's Attorney Natosha Toller. They planned for Lathem to choose people to kill, she said. Afterward, Warren was to shoot Lathem while Lathem was in the act of stabbing Warren to death, she said.
On the night of July 26, Trenton Cornell-Duranleau went with Lathem to Lathem's apartment building on the city's Near North Side, prosecutors said.
Cornell-Duranleau went to sleep in Lathem's apartment, at which point Lathem texted Warren that it was time to kill Cornell-Duranleau, prosecutors said.
Warren came to the apartment, and Lathem entered the bedroom where Cornell-Duranleau was sleeping while Warren stood in the doorway. Lathem had given Warren a cellphone and told him to record the murder, prosecutors said.
As Warren stood in the doorway, Lathem stabbed the sleeping Cornell-Duranleau "over and over in the neck and chest area," Toller said.
Cornell woke up and began to scream and fight back, at which point Warren walked in and put his hands on the victim's mouth, prosecutors said. Cornell-Duranleau bit his hand and began to flail, at which point Warren hit him in the head with a heavy metal lamp, prosecutors said.
Lathem continued to stab the man, while Warren went to get more knives, prosecutors said.
Both men then leaned over Cornell-Duranleau and stabbed him again and again, prosecutors said.
The man's last words were "Wyndham, what are you doing?" prosecutors said.
The men showered, then fled, prosecutors said, finally turning themselves over to authorities in the Bay Area nine days after the killing.
Judge Adam Bourgeois Jr. denied defense attorneys' requests to set a bond for Lathem and Warren.
"The heinous facts speak for themselves," he said. "And one other factor you ran ... I consider you to be a flight risk, both of you."
Chicago police were tipped off to Cornell-Duranleau's killing by a caller who warned of a possible crime taking place inside Lathem's residence, officials said.
Area Central Cmdr. Brendan Deenihan said Sunday that police believe Lathem himself made the phone call.
Cornell-Duranleau was found lying against a bedroom door of Lathem's 10th-floor apartment, according to police and an autopsy report. He had been stabbed 47 times in his back, chest, shoulder and abdomen. He was stabbed and cut additional times in his arms, chin, neck, hands and wrists.
At a news conference before the court hearing, Deenihan would not discuss a specific motive for the killing but hinted at something more ominous than what police previously described as "some type of falling-out."
"What I can tell you is it was not domestic in nature, like a husband-wife or boyfriend-boyfriend or a love triangle," Deenihan said Sunday. "That was not the motive. It was a little more dark and disturbing, as far as I'm concerned."
Northwestern fired Lathem after he fled from police. He had worked at the university as an associate professor of microbiology.
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(Tony Briscoe contributed to this report.)
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